


Security Blankets

by eastaustraliancurrent



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Book References, Canon Compliant, Confessions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Hysteria, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Snot, The Town House, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-11-02 07:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20668439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eastaustraliancurrent/pseuds/eastaustraliancurrent
Summary: Eddie makes the first move and ruins every defense Richie ever built.





	Security Blankets

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t find the source, but there’s this quote from Bill Hader describing Richie’s feelings about Eddie that I love: “‘I have a crush on you, but I don’t want to tell you that, so I’m going to push you away. But man, if he made the first move, that’d be the best thing ever.”

“Richie?” Eddie’s voice cuts through the door and into Richie’s half-doze. “You awake?”

Richie gropes for his glasses on the nightstand. “Un momento, por favor.” He stumbles to the door, not bothering to turn on the lamp.

The light from the hallway folds around Eddie, framed by the doorway, so his silhouette is wrapped in white. He’s wearing pajama pants and a plain gray T-shirt, and Richie can clearly see the outline of his aspirator in his pocket.

“The fuck is this, a slumber party?” Richie peers around him into the hall, as if he’s expecting more guests. “I don’t remember inviting you.”

“Can we talk?”

“What, you had a nightmare?”

Eddie finally glares at him and Richie can’t help but feel relieved as they slip back into the more familiar pattern. He in no way signed up for late night heart-to-heart bullshit. “Fuck you, Richie,” Eddie says, and he shoulders his way past Richie, flicking the lights on as he goes.

“Shit!” Richie covers his eyes. “Warn a guy, would you?” He fumbles the door closed as his eyes adjust and turns to Eddie, standing in the center of the room and watching him. Richie self-consciously picks at the hem of his ratty boxers, pulling them down from where they had bunched above his thighs. He stays next to the door, uneasy. “Listen, man, this better be quick, because I was having one hell of a wet dream before you came in.”

Eddie makes a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “Rich—” He runs an agitated hand through his hair.

Richie knows he should keep his mouth shut, but he never can, and he doesn’t want to hear whatever Eddie has to say to him. He can feel the weight in Eddie’s words, hanging in the space Richie carefully cultivated between them. “You should have seen it, man, I was banging your—”

“Richie, please!” Eddie jerks his hand up, next to his face in the gesture familiar from childhood, fingers together and extended, one straight rigid line from fingertip to elbow. “Listen for one _fucking_ second.”

Richie’s mouth snaps shut.

Eddie breathes in slow, and Richie can hear the slight wheeze in that breath, sees Eddie fist the aspirator in his pocket as though he’s a child with a security blanket. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, in those sewers,” Eddie starts.

“They’re actually storm drains,” Richie mumbles.

“And I still don’t remember what’s down there,” Eddie plows on, “but I know it’s gonna be awful. And Richie, I’m so fucking scared.”

Richie swallows hard.

“I just— We’re adults now Richie. It was different before; we were kids, we didn’t know what risks we were taking, but now.” Eddie drags in another cracked breath. “I don’t want to die without having lived yet.”

“Shit, man, you mean to tell me you haven’t lived at all in the last twenty-seven years?” Richie knows it’s pathetic, but he clings to the humor, his last chance at levity before Eddie fucks up everything Richie built around his heart, between the two of them.

“Richie,” Eddie says. “I love you.”

Richie’s heart stutters. “I love you, too, Eds, you know that.”

“Richie. Richie, look at me.” Richie does and it’s Eddie standing there, the same Eddie, the same eyes, saying, “Richie, I fucking _love_ you.”

The floor falls from beneath Richie’s feet, then he’s falling, too, spiraling. No one is supposed to _know_. No one is supposed to know how he feels, who he _is_, because he was never going to tell them. _He_ wasn’t gonna fuck up any relationships, no sir, so he sat back and spewed the same bullshit he had as a kid, only now he’s aware, now he can feel the guilt bubbling beneath his ribs, just under his heart, but he has to, it’s _right_, and he promised himself he wouldn’t ruin anything, now that he just got everything back.

And Richie feels that guilt, bubbling in his chest until it spews out of his mouth again. 

“Yeah, your mom said the same thing last night.”

Eddie frowns, and it’s not the usual Eddie frown, the one he makes when he doesn’t want to laugh, it’s a frown Richie never wants to see again. Eddie crosses the space between them, reaches out and grabs Richie by the wrists, urgency in his eyes. “I mean it, Richie. Can’t you be serious for one minute?”

And Richie can’t be serious, because if he does, everything will fall apart, the losers will fall apart and Eddie will hate him forever. This is some cruel joke (and Richie knows it isn’t, knows that nothing here is remotely funny) and if Richie falls for it, Eddie will sneer, Eddie will laugh, and Eddie will leave.

Richie’s eyes burn and for a minute he’s back in the clubhouse, him and Mike in a well of smoke, and Richie would bring his hands up to clasp his eyes if Eddie weren’t holding them down, stroking his thumbs across the inside of Richie’s wrists, but Richie’s hands still jerk in Eddie’s grasp as he starts to laugh.

Eddie drops Richie’s hands in disgust and Richie can finally reach under his glasses and _press_ at the burning in his eyes, laughing uncontrollably as tears sear through his palms.

“Fuck you, Richie,” Eddie says.

Richie hunches into himself, shaking silently as he dissolves into hysterics, and fights the urge to puke. 

“Richie.”

It’s all fucked up, after all the poison Richie ingested, after everything he did to avoid this moment, this moment where Eddie stands above him and leaves him again, but this time it will be worse, because Richie _knows_ he’ll remember, knows he’ll have to live with the memory of everything going to shit forever.

“Richie, are you okay?”

And all he can do is laugh.

Eddie’s hands are on his wrists again, pulling them from his eyes, and Richie panics, wanting to hide his eyes because he knows how transparent he’ll be, but Eddie does and Eddie sees and Richie finally, _finally_, sobs.

Eddie lays his hand on Richie’s cheek, softly stroking him again with his thumb, and Richie sees the concern in his eyes, yes, but he also sees the love, the sincerity, the tenderness. Eddie wraps his arms around Richie’s shoulders, and Richie folds into Eddie’s embrace, burying his face in Eddie’s neck.

Eddie holds Richie as long as he can stand it before he gently, but firmly pushes Richie away. “You need a fucking tissue, man.”

Richie snuffles a laugh, then grabs the hem of Eddie’s T-shirt and blows a honking wad of snot into it.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, RICHIE?” Eddie grabs ten tissues, rapid fire, from the tissue box on the nightstand and starts scrubbing furiously at his shirt.

“Noo, babe, I’m sorry, come back and hug me again.” Richie holds his arms out to Eddie and makes a kissy face at him.

Eddie blushes. “That’s not fucking funny, Rich. I need a new shirt now.”

“Why wear a shirt at all?” Richie suggests.

Eddie smiles, but his eyes are serious again. “Richie, what just happened?”

Richie sits down on the edge of the bed. “Can’t we just kiss and pretend it didn’t happen?”

Eddie comes over and sits next to him. He reaches between them to hold Richie’s hand. Richie twists their fingers together tight, stares at them, and they sit together in the silence for a moment.

“Twenty-seven years, Eds,” Richie whispers. “More, if you count the years before It. Three decades of me biting my tongue so I wouldn’t fuck it up.”

Richie looks up from their entwined hands and finds Eddie watching him, just as Richie knew he would be.

Eddies smiles, soft in the cheap lamplight. “I don’t think you could fuck it up if you tried.”

And Richie wishes he could believe him, but it’s already three decades gone now that he knows what he could have had. But Eddie is here now, and Eddie will be here tomorrow, and after that Richie doesn’t know, doesn’t want to think about, so when he sees Eddie’s eyes flick down to Richie’s lips and back up again, Richie leans in and kisses him in the middle of the town they cried in, hours before reality blurs with nightmares.


End file.
